Merry Christmas Darling
by Brown Eyes Parker
Summary: Five times FitzSimmons spent Christmas together and one time


**Merry Christmas Darling: Or Five Times FitzSimmons Spent Christmas Together and One Time They Didn't**

**A Fitz & Simmons Story**

**By Brown Eyes Parker**

**Rated: T**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**.**

The first Christmas they spent together was in a lab researching top secret technology for SHIELD. They had all but forgotten that it was Christmas Day until one of their fellow students had turned on the radio on to fill in the quiet spaces and the DJ mentioned it was December 25th before playing a pop holiday song Simmons didn't recognize.

Fitz looked up at her and smiled slightly as he pushed the samples he had been examining back into the refrigerator.

"_Happy Christmas," _he mouthed.

Simmons smiled back and mouthed it back, before tucking her hair behind her ears and disposing of her latex gloves and booting up a computer to record that day's findings.

Later on, the two of them sat on her dorm room floor and ate microwave pizza while they bonded over their ghosts of Christmas past. It wasn't much, but it was almost like being home for the holidays.

The second time they spent Christmas together, Simmons brought Fitz home with her. Everybody in her family made a big deal out of the fact that she was bringing an actual _boy_ home with her for the holidays. She had to tell her mother six times that they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend before she got the point across.

It didn't stop her mother from dropping not so subtle hints of the duration of the visit. It almost made Christmas completely unenjoyable. The only thing that made it the least bit bearable was Fitz's presence at her family home. He laughed off the carefully placed hints and pretended to be oblivious to the comments about the status of their relationship from the rest of her family.

The day after Christmas was over, he invited her to spend the next Christmas with his family because fair was fair, and they wouldn't push them to be in a relationship that was anything more than friendship.

The third time they spent Christmas together, he actually gave her a gift. It was just a small thing, something to tell her how much he appreciated her friendship. Simmons smiled and told him that he really hadn't needed to get her anything at all as she opened up a necklace from him.

She stopped short as she pulled the jewelry out of the box and looked at it, her breath catching in her throat as she looked at it, a small heart that was studded with cubic zirconia diamonds; it glittered in the multi-colored Christmas lights.

"I know what you think it means," Fitz said. "But I don't mean it like that, I swear. I'm just glad you're my friend and the necklace made me think of you."

Simmons smiled a little wider and held it out to him. "Help me put it on?" she requested.

Fitz returned her smile, more than happy to oblige her. She lifted her hair off the base of her neck and waited with almost breathless impatience to see how it looked on her. When he had clasped it, she went over to the mirror and admired it.

"It looks good on you," he told her.

"Oh thank you Fitz," Simmons whispered, turning around and giving him a hug.

The Christmas after SHIELD was unofficially disbanded and Hydra was on the rise, she went home to spend the holidays with her parents. While the rest of the team was tapping into their inner-child with an unbound enthusiasm, she figured they were trying to hold onto joy in a world that was falling apart while they raced to repair it. But she wasn't able to get into the spirit the way they were.

Things between Fitz and her had gone from bad to worse, and she just couldn't be with him on one of the days that had meant so much to the both of them together.

She spent Christmas day, drinking mulled cider while she listened to _River _on repeat and her family tip-toed around her, walking on eggshells and mentioning Fitz's name in loud whispers.

If she was younger and she still believed in Santa's existence, she would have probably written him a letter and asked for everything to return to the way it was before they had become more than a couple of scientists in a lab and Fitz had suffered brain damage.

But he wasn't real. And even if he was, all he would have been good for was a science experiment kit and a Barbie doll she didn't really want. So, she went to bed early and tried to get rid of the weight on her heart while she hoped against her will that things would be different the next year.

The fourth time they spent Christmas together it was because he asked her to, for old time's sake. It was just the two of them, in a mountain log cabin. Skye had challenged Bobbie and the guys to a hot chocolate drinking game and May and Coulson had gone off somewhere by themselves, looking for a break from _the kids_ they joked as they pulled on their coats and disappeared for a long drive in the mountains.

_Polar Express _was playing on one of the cable stations and Simmons pretended to be engrossed in the film while Fitz watched her from his corner of the couch and sucked on a candy cane.

"I'm glad you're here," he told her during a commercial break. "Things weren't the same without you last year."

"Really?" Simmons asked, hopefully.

"Yeah, _really_!" Fitz answered. "I like spending Christmas with you."

Simmons's heart gave a great leap as she smiled at him. "Yeah, yeah I like spending Christmas with you too. It just wasn't the same without you last year."

"It wasn't," Fitz agreed, reaching over and taking her hand.

They sat like that until May and Coulson returned and smiled knowingly at each other before they asked them to help prepare Christmas dinner.

Simmons wondered if leaving them alone to get them back together had been their _plan _all along.

The fifth Christmas they spent together, they were more than friends. It had been a long road to that point in their relationship but he had pursued her and wooed her relentlessly until she had finally said _yes_, thinking there would be no harm in one date.

Except there had been.

One date and she was head-over-heels for him completely by accident. But then, maybe she had been all along.

So, that morning when he proposed to her, the only logical thing to do was say yes.

**_The End_**

**Author's Note:**

**I wasn't going to post this for a while but then I realized, I wanted to put it out there before stuff got canon or not. And such. I hope you liked this! Please leave a review and tell me what you thought! **

**Love,**

**Holly, 12/9/2014_**


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